In a bid to improve the KMT's showing in the year-end election and avoid further alienating the large number of voters who like former president Lee Teng-hui (
Talk about shutting the barn door after the horses have escaped. It was the KMT that threw Lee out, that totally betrayed his "Taiwanization path." While it is true that in politics, there are neither everlasting friends nor foes, one still cannot help feeling disgusted about the length the KMT will go to for votes.
The proposal to make overtures to Lee has triggered disputes within the KMT, since the suggestion is something the hardline mainlander factions can't condone. It could even lead to a further split within the party, or make more members decide it is time to turn in their KMT cards. The divide within the party between different ethnic groups and advocates of different policy paths is growing too wide to be bridged.
The reorganization of the KMT after its defeat in the 2000 presidential election put Lien Chan (
Although the pan-blue camp organized by the KMT and the PFP cruised to victory in last December's local elections, there is no guarantee that it will be able to duplicate the feat in the Taipei City and Kaohsiung City mayoral elections this year. At present, the KMT and the PFP are barely maintaining the formality of an alliance. It is hard to imagine they will be able keep up the partnership in the long run.
Under the circumstances, anyone within the KMT advocating "honoring Lee" is running on fear. If the KMT loses the year-end elections, then its hope of regaining the presidency in 2004 will become even slimmer. If the KMT leadership thinks that the voters are too stupid to see through an "honoring Lee" ploy, then they are grossly underestimating the political acumen of Taiwan's voters.
It may be that some within the KMT hope that an effort by the party to make amends with Lee might also help create rifts between Lee and President Chen Shui-bian (
The truth of the matter is the KMT has decayed to the point that it can only think of the short term, of surviving the next round in the ring. It can't even begin to think about long-term policies. But each step it has taken in the last year or so has been away from mainstream opinion, away from political aspirations of the people of Taiwan and closer to its disintegration.
Everyone in Taiwan knows those who stay in the KMT are there not because they want to help the nation's democracy advance, but because they want access to the party's enormous assets and political resources. People know only too well how many of party members are truly loyal to the KMT's political ideals or committed to grassroots democracy.
Whether or not the KMT honors Lee isn't important. What matters is whether it will again honor Lee's localization path. If Lien continues to indulge himself with nostalgia for the KMT's past glories and power, the party will simply fade away.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus whip Fu Kun-chi (傅?萁) has caused havoc with his attempts to overturn the democratic and constitutional order in the legislature. If we look at this devolution from the context of a transition to democracy from authoritarianism in a culturally Chinese sense — that of zhonghua (中華) — then we are playing witness to a servile spirit from a millennia-old form of totalitarianism that is intent on damaging the nation’s hard-won democracy. This servile spirit is ingrained in Chinese culture. About a century ago, Chinese satirist and author Lu Xun (魯迅) saw through the servile nature of
In their New York Times bestseller How Democracies Die, Harvard political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt said that democracies today “may die at the hands not of generals but of elected leaders. Many government efforts to subvert democracy are ‘legal,’ in the sense that they are approved by the legislature or accepted by the courts. They may even be portrayed as efforts to improve democracy — making the judiciary more efficient, combating corruption, or cleaning up the electoral process.” Moreover, the two authors observe that those who denounce such legal threats to democracy are often “dismissed as exaggerating or
Monday was the 37th anniversary of former president Chiang Ching-kuo’s (蔣經國) death. Chiang — a son of former president Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石), who had implemented party-state rule and martial law in Taiwan — has a complicated legacy. Whether one looks at his time in power in a positive or negative light depends very much on who they are, and what their relationship with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) is. Although toward the end of his life Chiang Ching-kuo lifted martial law and steered Taiwan onto the path of democratization, these changes were forced upon him by internal and external pressures,
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus in the Legislative Yuan has made an internal decision to freeze NT$1.8 billion (US$54.7 million) of the indigenous submarine project’s NT$2 billion budget. This means that up to 90 percent of the budget cannot be utilized. It would only be accessible if the legislature agrees to lift the freeze sometime in the future. However, for Taiwan to construct its own submarines, it must rely on foreign support for several key pieces of equipment and technology. These foreign supporters would also be forced to endure significant pressure, infiltration and influence from Beijing. In other words,
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